


Worth

by lazywriter7



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bruce Banner Feels, Bruce Banner-centric, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Mentions of Suicide, Sakaar, Thor Feels, Thor: Ragnarok spoilers, Well just one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 11:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12556632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazywriter7/pseuds/lazywriter7
Summary: It was silent. He could feel the dust cling to his scalp, the tangles of hair, abrade into the wounds and scratches. It was always silent in the retreat; but he peeked like a terrified child each time. The world only shook when terrorised, the earth rent apart by the bellowing rage of the Other…of the Hulk.Bruce was the Other Guy now.





	Worth

**Author's Note:**

> One non-major Thor Ragnarok spoiler. Other than that, this ficlet doesn’t quite fit into the timeline or the tone of the movie - more of like the Ragnarok I’d imagined when the concept was first pitched to me.

He breathed into the crook of his elbow, eyelids shadowed red from the light he couldn’t completely shut away. Air puffed listlessly over the cracked skin of his lips, nostrils drawn dry and burning. But the smell filtered in anyway, sun and blood and sand. Whether it was him, or Sakaar – didn’t really matter at this point.

Useless after useless breath, and he finally blinked dry eyes open – vision dim and cornea itching. He was wearing clothes, roughened material scratching at the undersides of folded arms rested on folded knees. His neck spasmed as he moved his head, inch by agonising inch, until his forehead leaned against the jutting bone of a wrist. There was a little triangle of free sight formed between his knees pulled tight to the chest and the wall of his arms crossed above – he peered through it, to see if the world still shook.

It was silent. He could feel the dust cling to his scalp, the tangles of hair, abrade into the wounds and scratches. It was always silent in the retreat; but he peeked like a terrified child each time. The world only shook when terrorised, the earth rent apart by the bellowing rage of the Other…of the Hulk.

Bruce was the Other Guy now.

But even through that tiny triangular space, there was something catching at the corner of his sight. Red and tattered, once glossy but now stamped into the ground. He let his knees slide downwards, heels dragging against dusty concrete, enough to prop his chin over his arms and re-enter the world of the… not living. The awake, maybe.

There were indeed, remnants of a red cape soullessly fluttering over sand-sullied concrete, where Sakaar’s air drifts caught it. The other end was firmly trapped, prevented from escape under the weight of boulder-like thighs, covered by ragged leather breeches. Bruce followed the trail up: tarnished armour plates, pulled tight over a fraying gambeson and a solid, gently breathing chest. Two parallel lines of red ran up from the clavicle, over a jaw matted with beard and dirt, upto a shorn hairline. Messily drawn, granules of vermilion smeared and speckled over weather-beaten skin that Bruce once considered invulnerable.

Bruce tracked dust-scratched arms, down to blunt-fingered hands splayed out on that same concrete he was squatted over, those fingers still and unflexing. Empty.

“Do gods indulge in suicide?”

Thor moved his head, from where it leaned against imprisoning walls; motion just as slow and aching as Bruce’s. The glint of blue irises was almost obscured by all the grime and rake, brown and red.

“Not to my knowledge.” That voice was still deep, but it did not rumble. “Though our lives seem to linger, almost till forever.”

Thor breathed, heavy and rattling. It would have swallowed the air in a room, once upon a time, his presence indomitable; now he leaned his head on an opposing wall, throat bared and words quietly carrying. “I suppose I see where the impulse comes from. To… shut it all off for a while.”

Shut it all off. Yeah, that sounded about right. Ironic, that the thing… the person that Bruce had intimately loathed, for taking that option away from him–

_“_ – _put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out–_ ”

–ironic, that while Bruce leashed the reins of control tighter and tighter, all he’d had to do was give up. Give over. Wake up from – _two years two years twoyearstwoyears_ – the best sleep he’d ever remembered. Shut it all off for a while.

Ironic, to be on the other side of an experience that would petrify a god, and yet to sit here in a coward’s skin, unshaking.

“I’m sorry about your hammer.”

“As am I.” Thor returned, an unamused tilt to his lips echoing a smile. “The hitting and flying were all well and good, but the loss of constant self-affirmation will take some getting used to.” An exhale, a fraction lighter. “You’d think I would have outgrown it.”

“Everyone likes to know they’re worthy.” Bruce watched the motes stir in his breath, insignificant collisions by the dozen.

“True. But worthy of what?” Thor blinked, slow and weighty. His nails drew lines in the dust, two and parallel, over and over. “In my younger, foolhardy days, I used to take it to mean the best warrior in all the lands. Best,” he repeated, beard bristles scraping over lip. “it was an exclusive word. An excluding word. Mine alone to claim, along with Mjolnir.”

_Bruce Banner, the best scientist in the field of gamma radiation. His face is plastered across classrooms everywhere. If anyone can crack the super serum, he can._ “And now you know it means the best moral fibre in all the land?” It came out a little caustic – Bruce didn’t know he still had the fortitude for that.

Thor laughed. It sounded strange, the air wavering uncertainly under its weight – too used to battle-cries and death-wails. “There is an inscription, friend. On the hilt. How do you say it on Earth – read the label first.”

_Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor._

Bruce cracked a smile – small and flickering, but imperative. His voice was barely above a murmur. “You have an unfair advantage.”

“Of being me? Quite.” Thor shifted in place, hand moving to press down on the cape, careful not to rip it further. “Though if it were indeed… ah, encoded to my fingerprint, the good Captain would not have been able to nudge it. Though it scarce reflects ill on him, that he couldn’t do more.” A blink, and his gaze grew overcast, almost remote. “Power of Thor, rule of Asgard. Kingship sometimes requires decisions that taste bitter going down the throat, that demand weighing of lives on a scale. Refusing to do so might make him unworthy of a throne, but not a lesser man than me.”

Bruce held still. “What are you trying to say?”

“We are all burdened by our own worth.” Thor smiled in weariness, smiled in certainty. “Struggling to lift it – sometimes triumphantly, sometimes not. I was born to wield thunder, to protect and guide my people. And I am no more worthy of raising the Captain’s shield than he is – was – of lifting my hammer.”

Cape half-shredded off, stripped down to rusty metal and sheared head, grime-streaked, bloodied – Thor had never looked more real. And godly. “And so it comes to reckon that the power of the best warrior in all the lands, should be stayed in the hands of one who wishes not to fight. Who wouldn’t tear through the realms for sport, for dominance, just because he could. Who is the most cautious man I know, control as strong and finely tempered as dwarven steel.” Thor’s eyes found him, keen and steady and unquenchingly blue. “I know you consider him a curse, Bruce. And I may be offering you grievous insult – but of all my compatriots, Asgardian or Avenger, there isn’t a man in the universe I would trust with this. With him. Not one, worthy of the Hulk.”

The ground was shaking again. Drums, reverberating deeply in their wooden bellies before the sound broke free, thudding through walls and the ground – and the roar of the crowd. Bruce stayed still and blinking, and thought of nothing at all, though his voice rasped strangely. “It’s time.”

“And look where it went, lost in my prattle.” Thor shook his head, an errant gleam of an incisor, there and lost before he heaved himself to his feet, jaw gone tight with the pain. Staggered once, before flinging out a hand and steadying his bulk against the wall, pushing upright without a verbalised sound.

Bruce slowly unfolded his knees, palms flat on the floor and stinging as he levered himself upwards, inch by inch. When he extended his awareness out beyond his brittle skin again, Thor was scuffing a hand through the back of his own coarsely short hair. “I wouldn’t have thought it before – but it’s like a weight gone from my head.” A slanting gaze, a grin too exhausted but still roguish. “Leaves more room for thought. And philosophy.”

“It leaves your neck looking like a prime target.” He didn’t know he was going to say it before he did. The building clamour was vibrating in his ear drums, a pulse behind his temple that thumped faster and faster. “Don’t let him rip it off.”

“We have an understanding.” The hinge of the helmet screeched even as it hid that head of hair from view, raking through age-begotten rust as Thor pulled the chin-guard into place. Another fleeting, undeserved smile. “See you on the other side, friend.”

And he strode forward, dawn of the arena breaking around his face like a blood-halo. The sand and the crowd-roar swallowed him up, Bruce blinking in the wake.

The chants were stirring through the air, the build to a crescendo that seemed inexorable – a single syllable, grunted, heaved, from a thousand-mouthed beast. _Hulk. Hulk. Hulk. Hulk._

Breath hissed past his lips. Shut it all off. Shut it all off for a while.

_Hulk. Hulk. Hulk._

Not one, worthy of the Hulk.

_Hulk. Hulk. Hulk._

A step forward, and Bruce closed his eyes.


End file.
